Introducing the Breach Challenge League

This week we talked to Chris Wilson at Grinding Gear Games about the upcoming Challenge League for Path of Exile. Breach is a new League that is coming in December. Players will be excited to battle some horrific Lords over the holidays as this expansion comes with some great mechanics and fast paced content for players. The Path team has been consistent with expansions every thirteen weeks or so. This pace of content has been very successful with the fans and Grinding Gears shows no signs of slowing down.

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Breach deals with alternate dimensions that are trying to break into the normal world of game play. These tears in reality suck players into the quickly spawned zone and throw waves of monsters at them. The more monsters you can kill the larger the breach goes. This opens much harder challenges and eventually leads you to the Breach Lords. More on them later.

Breaches open about every fifteen minutes or so as you play the game. Once inside you will go full speed until the breach closes in about one minute. Chris explaining that the timing of the breaches was important as they wanted bursts of intense gameplay. If you start to do poorly and the monsters close in the breach will collapse and force you out. Not to worry though, you will not lose any of the loot you won inside the alternate dimension.

There are five types of breaches in the world: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Chaos, and Physical all of which represent the elements of Path of Exile. Fire, Ice, and Lightning are more common breaches while Chaos and Physical are rare. The system is randomly generated. Items that drop in each one are aligned to their respective breach. So, you will see Fire items etc. If you spawn a breach and do well, you may unlock one of the Lords. These are nasty bosses who you can fight and will drop loot, however in the first phase of the breaches they are impossible to kill outright. If you defeat one, they will simply retreat, but don’t worry, you will be able to get your revenge later, for now think of them as loot piñatas. Chris said that they are very dangerous this way with the amount of damage they can throw around. Still if you are strong enough, you’ll be able to beat some great loot out of them before they retreat.

Monsters in the breach drop Splinters which can be collected and traded. These splinters can be put together to eventually form a Breach Stone. The trading of Splinters is very important to players because some people my just want to do the Lightning or Chaos breaches. This way they can trade other to players who have a different mission. Once you have enough Splinters you can unlock a Breach Stone by putting it into your Map Device. This will trigger a domain to open and now you are set to fight and kill the Breach Lords on their own plane. Once you open a breach yourself, be ready to fight across the zone to get to the lord. It is fast paced and deadly.

Besides the Breach Stones, Chris explained that there are also Breach Rings which can be found. These high-level items adhere to one of the Breaches and double your properties. You can become a Breach Hunter going after the top levels of gear in each element. You can rebuild all your weapons around this ring. There are also 15 core unique items with this expansion. Each breach has weapons, armor, and jewelry. These unique items will make you rethink your entire build as you can now get benefits which help stack your armor. The highest items you can find in the game, and these are top tier are the Breach Blessings which are dropped by the Lords. Once you get a lord in his final zone by unlocking a Breach Stone, if you can kill him, then look for a possible Breach Blessing to drop. These allow you to upgrade your uniques into a super version. Chris wanted the elite players to know they added this to have a great goal in the end game.

Finally, another item that is coming with this update are cloaks. Players have been asking for cloaks for a long time and the team is finally able to deliver. Overall Breach is shaping up to be a fantastic challenge season. The Grinding Gears team have a great handle on what the players want and continue to deliver content across all aspects of the game. We are very excited to talk to Chris again in January about their next expansion, for now good luck with those Breach Lords!